


The Fittest

by Siria



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Community: cliche_bingo, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-13
Updated: 2009-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Savannah's thirteenth birthday, her dad gives her her own bug-out bag. It's an olive-drab army rucksack, just the right size for her to handle; it's second-hand and battered so that it won't draw immediate attention from looters, and it means that she's grown up enough now that he trusts her to be able to handle herself when it happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fittest

**Author's Note:**

> Set post 2.22. Thanks to Cate for beta reading. Written for cliche_bingo, for the prompt 'dystopia'.

For Savannah's thirteenth birthday, her dad gives her her own bug-out bag. It's an olive-drab army rucksack, just the right size for her to handle; it's second-hand and battered so that it won't draw immediate attention from looters, and it means that she's grown up enough now that he trusts her to be able to handle herself when it happens.

Savannah's rucksack contains: four litres of water, which she will have to refresh regularly herself; water purifiers; waterproof matches and tinder; thicker, heavier clothing than she normally wears in the California sun; a sewing kit; two space blankets; some MREs and packets of hybrid seeds designed to grow in poor soil and weak light; a first aid kit containing antibiotics and ibuprofen; a full-face respirator; iodine tablets; soap; three rolls of toilet paper with the cardboard inserts removed to create more space; a Swiss army knife; two metal mess tins for boiling water and cooking food; a fixed-blade knife in its own sheath; a whetstone. Traditional survival kits usually include cash and signal flares, credit cards and maps and emergency contact numbers and portable radios, but she's learned well enough to know that there's no point making room in her pack for stuff that will be worthless after the Day.

Her dad has two packs like hers—one that he keeps in the house, the other that he keeps in the trunk of his car—but his both have guns and a quantity of ammo stashed inside. He's taught her to be a pretty good shot, and she can hit the centre of mass on the paper target at least four times out of five now, but he won't let Savannah keep a gun in her pack just yet. _Not yet, bug_, he tells her, and tugs gently on the end of her braid, which she _hates_. Later, when he thinks she's not looking, she sees him slipping something into a side-pocket of the rucksack. At first, she thinks he's seen sense and given her a gun after all, but when she has a chance to check that evening she sees that it's a small book, its blue leather cover worn so soft with use that the gilt lettering spelling out _Holy Bible_ has almost faded away.

Savannah can't make up her mind if it's something useful or not, and she kneels on the floor next to her rucksack for a long few minutes before she finally puts the Bible back into the bag. Inside its pages, she's tucked one of the few possessions that she still lets herself value: a photo of herself when she was a kid. It was taken at some ZeiraCorp function, a promotional picture for one of the company's glossy newsletters. The photographer had discarded it because someone had jogged his arm just as he pressed the shutter, and it was slightly blurred, but it was the only picture Savannah had of both her parents together with her: Mother standing slim and straight, hair immaculate, one hand resting lightly on Savannah's shoulder; her dad looking at someone standing just outside the frame, wearing a suit and tie (Savannah always finds that funny), with a neatly-trimmed goatee instead of a beard.

Her dad always tells her—Sarah, too, when she was still around—that she'll only be able to bring the bare essentials with her to the future. Savannah hopes that means she'll be able to take her memories with her.

Savannah Ellison is thirteen years, five months and nineteen days old when Los Angeles finally burns. She stands on a hillside with her dad, pack on her back and gun in its holster on her thigh, and watches as the skyline blazes and the world convulses in its overdue apocalypse. Her dad's hands are clenched in fists, and she can hear him mumble something under his breath, reciting, she thinks, from the rhythm of his words—_and you shall see the abomination of desolation; for in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation_.

She takes his hand as they turn to walk away, towards the tunnels where they've hidden some more stockpiles of food and water and should be safe for now. Her dad falls silent for a time; but just before they let themselves down into the sewers, away from the light that's brighter than even California should ever be, he tells her he's sorry.

_We should have—there should have been a way of stopping this_, he tells her. _This shouldn't have been your world._

Savannah blinks at him for a moment, but recovers and smiles and says _it's okay, dad_ and pretends to understand what he's saying, standing back as he levers the manhole cover out of the way. This has always been her world, she thinks—this world where the sky flares sodium-white overhead and almost everyone she's ever known is dead or dying amongst rubble and flames—she can't remember a time when she hasn't known that this was how the world really is. She's spent a long time waiting for the world to wake up.


End file.
